For many years, JoopeA Foundation was the solo sponsor & organizer of participation of Iranian & Persian-speaking people in Queer Pride Parades -or as we call it Iran Pride- around the world.
The Iran Pride project was at heart of JoopeA’s activities since 2009 where our team organized the first ever pride parade in Tehran in 2010 under the name of the Iran Pride Day. Yes, it might be unbelievable, but we did it.
Iran Pride has grown so much since. And now we are proud to announce that in a joint effort of four Queer organizations, Iran Pride has become an entity itself under the official name of the Pride Commission of Iran.
Iran Queer & Queer Kadeh from Canada & Azad Queer from the Netherlands joined hands with JoopeA to make Iran Pride an internationally recognizable brand in the field of Queer Rights & equality.
Let’s celebrate this new dawn of visibility for Iranian & Persian-speaking gays, lesbians, transgender & Intersex people & all queers.
Monday, 27th November 2017: JoopeA Foundation held IranPride 2017 Closing ceremony to close this chapter of IranPride and open the space for their participation for Pride Parade in 2018.
Here are remarks of this event in brief:
Member of EU Parliament fully supports IranPride
MEP and member of the delegation for the relationship with Iran, Mrs. Marietje Schaake has shown her full support for IranPride and LGBTI Rights for Iran in a video message.
“All Iranian suffer from repression, LGBTs are specific target; they’ve been imprisoned, tortured and executed. At the same time, social acceptance of LGBTs remains lower at times.”
Mrs. Schaake said.
“Equality is the principle reason why the Iranian LGBT movement wants to participate in the next Pride parade in Amsterdam. And I’m fully support this decision.”
She added.
LGBTI Policy Officer of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs speech
Mr. Mark Reichwein:
“When LGBTI people are not treated well, there is something wrong in entire society. Unfortunately around the world over seventy countries still criminalise homosexuality and in seven of them, there is death penalty for homosexuals.”
“This celebration of diversity matters and especially for those people, those participants around the world where they less fortunate when it comes to acceptance in their own society.”
Mr. Reichwein explained about the need for Pride Parade.
The ceremony in details
On Monday 27th November 2017, JoopeA Foundation (Stichting JoopeA) held IranPride 2017 Closing ceremony together with the representative of Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, COC Nederland, COC Amsterdam, Roze in Blouw politie, Human Rights activists, journalists, sponsors and supporters of the Iran Boat in Amsterdam Canal Pride 2017.
This ceremony started with the speech of Mr. Mark Reichwein, LGBTI Policy Officer of Dutch Foreign Ministry and followed by the speech of Elham Malekpoor Arashlu, poet and the core management team of JoopeA. Therefore, Raham Rafiee, founder of JoopeA gave a summary of the history of IranPride day and the background of JoopeA. After Raham, Faarjam, musician and composer performed his music. Iman Firouzifard, the core member of JoopeA News spoke about his story of Human Rights activities and also the projects of the foundation. The video message of MEP Mrs. Marietje Schaake has been shown and followed by closing speech of Raham and thank you message to all groups, individuals and organisations who helped JoopeA and IranPride.
At the end, Amsterdam Pride Organization and COC Amsterdam received symbolic presents.
Zamaneh Media is one of the leading progressive media NGOs among other Persian medias in exile. They are mainly known for their efficient and valuable news website and online radio Radio Zamaneh.
Zamaneh Media is going to celebrate it’s 10 years anniversary on 21th October with the title of “Iran: The Road Ahead” along with holding a conference and dance party in Amsterdam.
JoopeA is pleased to be the partner with Zamaneh to present Iranian LGBTIQ in a road ahead! Article19 and JoopeA will present obstacles on the way of Iranian queers in the online world.
Join us on 21th October to discuss how JoopeA processes big data on Sexual Rights and how we manage online security for minorities in restricted countries.
We take security very serious. There is no doubts about it. This is why we double check everything from security view point. We have two high tech security advisers who are from top 10 security advisers, partners with Google and Facebook, etc. Qurium who host our platforms on their servers and Cure53 a group of pen-test company. Additionally, we put our platforms in Hacker One a group of white hackers for security audits.
But what take us to that point to make every section on our websites public? what logic is behind this?
We believe “Private” is an illusion when it comes to online life. Everything marked as “Private” is being watched by website owners, ad companies, artificial intelligence, hackers and even NSA!
So, it’s up to you what you share online. But when you shared it, it’s all over the internet and you can’t stop it.
We believe if we keep every section public, it will give us a better and more realistic view. It will alert us about the content we want to share every time.
“This is Public! Watch your steps.”
The bottom line is, we keep everything open to public to make ourselves to be more careful. We give everybody the same right to see our activities and not only Google authorities, hackers or NSA agents. This way we can be more cautious and serious about security.
